by Dan Davis
“He has killed so many people that I love,” I said. “I must pursue him, even to the ends of the Earth. And I cannot live in England any longer. For years already, they have been whispering about my eternal youth. I hid away as much as I could but how long can I live as Richard of Ashbury before I am driven out? In ten years, I will be almost sixty. What about ten years after that? And all the while, I will look like this. At least by leaving now, it can be in a manner of my own choosing rather than being hounded out by an angry crowd that believes I am in league with Satan. And I am not made for this land, I do not deserve to stay. I am not a good man, I know that now. I am a killer. I tortured a man, prolonged his wretched life and I did not feel guilty for it. I bring death to my enemies but also I bring my curse down upon those around me. I cannot fight it. I must go away. The Holy Land is the only way. I can move from place to place, selling my lance and sword. It is not a bad life. Bloody, perhaps. But better suited to my kind of evil.”
“You are a good man,” Emma said, firmly. “You are. I know it, even if you do not. Do not submit to the thought that you are the same as that corrupted lunatic.”
“We have the same blood,” I said.
“You think that is what makes a man or a woman good or evil?” Emma said, growing angry. “You are not a perfect knight from a ballad, Richard but you fight for the right things. You try, at least. You saved so many of those people in Sherwood. All those prisoners, I heard there were dozens. Just as you saved Jocelyn and me when we were children. You burned yourself almost to death in rescuing us. Would you have done such a thing if you were evil?”
“You were too young to remember,” I said, certain that she knew of the fire from Jocelyn.
She fixed me with her beautiful eyes. “I remember everything.”
“I pray that is not true,” I said, recalling the horrors of that cavern.
“I remember being certain that we would never get out of that cage,” Emma said, her eyes looking through me. “I remember the people screaming and the smoke. Jocelyn held me, sheltered me from the flames. He said to me, over and over, to close my eyes and that all would be well soon enough.” She took a deep breath. “And then there you were. My father. You used your body to hold back the flames so we could get out. I remember your skin turning black and cracking. But still, as soon as I saw you I knew you would save me. And you did.”
I had saved her by giving her some of my blood. Never had I considered that my blood might have been the reason she had brought forth her previous children before their time. Even the fact that she had ever conceived a child at all seemed counter to William’s assertions about infertility. But perhaps it was because she had been so young when she drank that she had overcome it. Obviously, I said nothing whatsoever about this to her at the time, while she was great with child. I prayed that she would bear the child to term.
I took a deep breath. “I had no idea that you remembered anything of it at all. You were so young. I thought you would not remember me at all. And then I abandoned you.”
“And it was years before I forgave you for that. But even then, we never doubted that you would welcome us when we came to your door. You never once begrudged us anything. You bought Jocelyn finer horses and armour than you had yourself. You welcomed into your hall men and women that you despised so that I might have the proper company.” She laughed. “You are not an evil man. A fool for women, perhaps.”
I took her hands. “I always hesitate to call you daughter. But if you were truly mine, I could not be prouder of you. Nor could I be happier.”
“You are my father,” Emma said, smiling her lovely smile. “In every way that matters. And you always will be.”
Kinder words were never spoken and I remember them fondly. On dark, bitter nights over the centuries, I have recalled them and they have made me warm. For all I have done wrong and all I have lost, at least I did some things right.
Before I left, I took William of Cassingham aside. “I like you, William. I always have. But if you treat her and her children with anything other than profound respect then I shall return to England and cut out your heart, do you understand me?”
He looked very grave, swallowing but he looked back across the hall at his new wife before he answered. “Once, I loved fighting. I wanted to win a knighthood and be a great man. Now, all I want to do is make her happy.”
I never saw Emma again. But I do know that she lived a long, good life with Cassingham and three healthy children, taking care of her own family and of the people of the Weald. It is my belief that she lived the life that she wanted and that she deserved.
***
And so it was that I left England once more. I left behind my land. And my name.
I left with Eva. When she drank my blood after being drained of her own, she had become immortal, like me. The difference was that she had to drink blood every few days or she would grow weak, get sick and die.
After Sherwood, she had taken days to accept her fate while we hunted William. She never spoke very much and I fretted about what she would do. At times, she was angry and I knew not to speak to her. Other times, usually in the dark of the night, she would become disheartened and sit curled up into herself. I never knew whether she would welcome my embrace or angrily punch me away. I blamed myself for what happened to her, for leaving her at the priory was an inexcusable blunder.
At the time, I had convinced myself I was protecting her and Marian but really I wanted the women out of the way while I waged my war. Eva could have fought beside me on the walls of Lincoln and been safer than she had been at the priory but for all she had shown her ability, she was a woman and I had put her away. She had warned me, I had ignored her and she was the one who had paid the price.
I remembered how it felt to die. I remembered the fear and anguish that resounded after waking again like an echo in an empty hall. I remembered that the horror of it faded in time, like all things. So I gave her time. Whenever she would allow it, we slept entwined and I wrapped her in my arms through the darkness.
Eva had left the land of the living and dying. The consolation was her enormous strength and speed. And, I think, that at least I would be beside her.
Before heading south from Derbyshire that last time, we stopped off at Tutbury Priory in the dead of night.
I banged on the door of the prior’s house. It took the young man a long time to answer, it being between matins and lauds. I knocked quietly but insistently.
He was muttering under his breath when he yanked the door open.
“This had better be—” Prior Simon started. He froze, dropped his candle and attempted to slam the door on me.
I placed my foot in the door. “My dear prior,” I said into the shadows. “You sold out the innocent young women left in your care, do you recall?”
“I had to,” he said, backing away. “They forced me to do it.”
I pushed the door open, stepping inside, into the light cast by a single candle lit on the prior’s bedside. “They paid you.”
“It is my duty to do what is best for the priory,” Prior Simon said, then gasped as Eva stepped into the room behind me with her dagger drawn.
“I will kill him,” I said over my shoulder. “Then you drink his blood.”
“No,” Eva said, pushing past me. “I will kill him, too.”
The prior’s scream was cut off before he could utter it. We filled his robes with rocks and slid his drained corpse into the fishpond and we watched his body plopping beneath the black waters.
“The monks are waking for prayers,” I whispered to Eva and we rode south for the Weald. She wiped the blood from her chin and nodded.
After Emma and Cassingham’s marriage, we went to Dover to catch a boat to Calais before the autumn storms ruined the short passage.
“I have to drink blood,” Eva said to me while we waited on the cliffs of Dover looking down at the fishing boats bobbing far below beyond the beach. The thriving town was behind us. Down on the bea
ches, it thronged with fishermen and traders.
“You do,” I said to Eva, standing close to her.
“I must drink blood every day or two in order to stay strong. Or I will become ill like that creature Tuck, ashen and green of skin and raving mad. So, in order for me to live, others must die. I know what you have said, that some men deserve death. I do not disagree. But there are not enough of them to keep me alive.”
The sky was clear and light blue though the wind was growing colder every day. Though it was yet daytime, the crescent of the moon hung above the massive walls of the unconquered castle, higher up the cliffs to the north.
“You have never been to the Holy Land,” I said, facing south. “You have not seen the rest of the world. Everywhere on this Earth, there is war. And anywhere there is war will be blood enough for the both of us. And whenever there is not, you will drink my blood,” I said, looking out at the choppy waters of the English Channel. “You can drink from me every day if you prefer. No one has to die for you to get blood.”
She scoffed. “So you wish me to be as dependent upon you as a baby is on its mother.”
She spoke half in jest yet the word fell heavy upon us. She had died, my blood had brought her back but she would never now create life from her womb. Eva was the first vampire that I ever created with my own blood. She would not be the last. Just as my seed was barren, all vampires that William and I made over the centuries were infertile. William had told us the truth, in that at least. Years later we discussed our first months together. Eva said she had half hoped we would have a child from our many couplings. It was never to be but already, in Dover that day, we were accepting of it. In fact, it drove us together even more because we thought that we would have no one in our lives but ourselves. We were wrong about that.
“I swear, Eva,” I said to her on the white cliffs. “I swear that I will stand by you. Through all of this. Through whatever it is that we face out there in the world.”
“We are leaving the land of the living,” she said, reaching out to take my hand. “Destined to live on, ageless, undying. But never truly part of the world.”
“Don’t be ridiculous, woman,” I said. “Our life is going to be full of wonder and beauty. And plenty of fighting.”
“Is this some sort of marriage vow?” she asked, looking up at me.
“Yes,” I said, squeezing her hand. “If you will have me.” I held my breath. People said that I gave little away of my true thoughts and feelings but Eva was so much more difficult to read than I was, I am sure. Especially then.
Eva nodded, almost to herself. “Do we not require witnesses?”
“Who would we have to witness our union?” I said, smiling. “We are leaving England, so why would we need them? And anyway, whoever they are, we will outlive them. The only witnesses worthy of us are the sky and the sea and the moon above us.”
“Well,” Eva said, smiling, finally. Her face came to life. “Alright, then.”
We sailed for France. We travelled to Italy, to Cyprus, to Outremer where the last Crusader kingdoms held on to their lands. We travelled to Constantinople and then back to Italy and France. We went to Spain and spent many years living in that fine land, fighting in the endless struggles amongst the Spanish kingdoms and against the remaining Moors.
We fought for one lord or another in many battles. I earned my keep as a guard for many a merchant. Sometimes Eva disguised herself as a man. When she could, she fought openly as a woman, though often that was difficult. Other times she had to put up with posing as an ordinary wife. We had to run from a number of towns and mercenary camps.
To obtain blood for us both, we killed men who deserved to die. Criminals, mainly and we fed well while punishing the guilty wherever we went. For a while, we kept a tavern in Acre and even tried farming, growing fruit and felling trees. We always went back to what we knew best, for I knew by then that I was not truly a good man. I was not a true knight. Killing and torture and blood by the bucket load were entirely my nature. But I tried at least to always be good to my woman. A sword in my hand by day, Eva in my bed at night and a belly full of blood as often as I could get it. And so we were contented.
Always, though, I knew that I would find William again somewhere, someday. It was many years later and the place was farther east than I had ever travelled before, to the grandest and most civilised city in the world. A centre of learning and culture the likes of which the world had never seen. The citizens were the most literate, the most highly educated, most cultured on earth. A city that was both a crossroads and destination for trade between China and Syria, Russia and Arabia. East and West. The greatest city of the age, Baghdad.
Amongst the beauty and riches, I encountered William once more. But he was fighting with the most terrifying warriors and agents of destruction the world has ever known. William had finally encountered an entire people whose love of mayhem and murder rivalled his own.
The Mongols.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Richard’s story continues in Vampire Khan: the Immortal Knight Chronicles Book 3
VAMPIRE KHAN
The Immortal Knight Chronicles
Book 3
Richard of Ashbury
and the Mongol Invasion of Persia
1253 to 1266
Dan Davis
Copyright © 2018 Dan Davis
All rights reserved.
Part One – Constantinople ~ 1253
The banners of the knights whipped and snapped in the wind, framed by the vivid expanse of blue above. To my right, timber stands held the cheering spectators beneath the banners and blocked my view of the mighty walls of Constantinople on the horizon.
Through the eye slits of my helmet, I could see little enough. Straight ahead across the field, the line of knights struggled to contain their horses. Beside me, on my left and right, the men of my own side held their lances ready. Our horses stomped and shook their heads as the riders fought their beasts into submission and growled threats at them.
My destrier trembled. He was a monster. Too big and too slow for most knights and long in the tooth. Do not ride him into battle, a Burgundian man-at-arms had joked with me when I had purchased the animal, hitch him to a plough instead. But the beast rode as straight as an arrow in the charge and feared nothing. And he had a terrible anger when roused and would tear chunks from another horse’s neck in a fight.
My enemies that day were twenty knights from France, Navarre, Aragon, Acre and elsewhere. My side was twenty knights from all over Christendom. The tourney was a French invention but it had spread immediately to the English, who knew a good thing when we saw it. And it had, over the years, become popular in many kingdoms of Christendom. That day outside Constantinople we even had two knights from the Kingdom of Poland, three from Bohemia, and two from the Kingdom of Sicily.
And me. A knight of England, who had no lord and nothing to offer but his lance and his sword. My coat and shield were black, emblazoned with a single red chevron.
The others were a riot of red, blue, green, white and gold, with blazons of crosses, stripes, lions, eagles, and chalices. Lances raised, pennants flapping in the wind like a flock of exotic birds.
It was best to enter a tourney with a companion or two, at least, who will fight alongside you and watch your flanks while you watched theirs. Some tourneys had companies of ten or more men fighting as brothers. While I, close to friendless in a strange land, had to make do with two young Breton knights who pretended they were granting me a favour by allowing me to fight with them. They seemed to ride well enough and they swore they had broken lances in Picardie and Paris. The damned whoresons barely spoke to me because they thought I was poor and landless. Well, they were half right. Eva, my wife, said it was because they were afraid of me but then she said that about everybody.
Much of the noise, muffled already by my helm, faded away as the watching crowd fell into hushed anticipation. That meant they had seen the order given and were watching the trum
pets raised.
My horse stamped a foot and quivered.
The trumpets sounded.
Across the field, the line of knights contracted as each man tensed into hunch behind his shield and raked his spurs into his horse’s flanks. I did the same, urging my destrier forward. The magnificent beast sighed with relief as he could at last give way to his instinct. Still, I held him to the trot and he would only reach a full charge as we met the enemy. He was a fine horse.
Beside me, the mounted knights leapt forward, pulling ahead as the men forgot everything we had discussed and urged their horses from dead standing straight into the charge.
If we did not meet the enemy line as one, then the most advanced of our knights would perhaps face two lances instead of one. My side would lose men to the initial charge and make my own fight all the harder.
And yet I made no attempt to keep up with them. I looked left and right, my view through the eye slits bouncing around. Already, our entire line was ragged. The centre, other than myself, was pulling ahead and the sides were lagging behind, but it was not a spearheaded charge.
Ahead, beyond the two Bretons, the knights against us lowered their lances and couched them. Both sides picked their final targets.
Mine was the man I had lined up against at the start. A knight of France named Bertrand de Cardaillac. A truly massive man in green and gold, newly arrived in Constantinople. Sir Bertrand was said to be a great knight with a reputation for brutality and no other wanted to face him, leaving me free to take the key position in the centre. I wanted his wealth. I wanted his horse and his purse.
And I wanted to see how good he truly was.
Two knights of Aragon flanked him, and they had together formed a temporary company for the tourney. As long as no other interfered, it would be my Bretons and me against Sir Bertrand and his Aragonese.