by Dan Davis
Two immortal keshig turned when they heard me coming after them. Hulegu glanced back and snarled an order before continuing on.
It was only as they attacked that I recalled I had no sword. No proper weapon at all, and no armour either.
One hulking bodyguard was silent and armed with an axe, and the other big sod roared some Mongol insult and swung his sword wildly as he rushed in.
It would have been prudent to retreat and procure a weapon but I was very far from rationality by then and in my madness, I believed that I could fight through them with my bare hands.
I dodged the blow from the axe and shifted away from the wielder but was forced to block the sword of the other man with my forearm. It was that or lose my head. The blade hit the bones of my wrist and, as we both moved, it ripped downward along my forearm and tore off a great flap of muscle and skin before biting deep into the bone. While his sword was bound in my arm, I grabbed his wide-open mouth with my other hand and yanked with all my might, ripping down in fury. His jawbone came off in my hand along with the stretched, tattered skin from his temples, cheeks and neck. I tossed it away and he fell, making a horrendous, gargling scream and clawing at the ruin of his throat.
The axeman winged his weapon at my face and I jumped back, yanking the first man’s sword from my arm. I tried not to think about the sight of the flesh from half of my forearm flopping back and wet, like I had been peeled.
With a sword finally in my hand, I rushed the keshig, grappled with him and slid the point of my blade up into his groin and wriggled it in, cutting the great vein there, as well as gelding and, eventually, disembowelling him also.
Astonishingly, the man with no lower face climbed back to his feet and came at me making a gurgling, keening sound from his chest. His eyes were screwed up in desperate rage as he threw a pathetic punch at my face. I stabbed him in the chest. As repulsive as it was, I needed blood and so I drank from his ruin of a neck while he struggled with the last strength of his life, drowning in his own blood. After spitting out an enormous, slimy clot or a length of vein, I tossed him to the ground and looked for Hulegu.
“He went in there, Richard!” Eva shouted, running up behind me. She pointed across the courtyard to one of the nearby kitchen buildings.
Without wasting time on thanks, I chased after Hulegu and kicked my way inside. I saw right away what it was. The low-ceilinged, one-room building was for housing a group of blood slaves. It was dark, lit by only a couple of smoky lamps. There must have been forty or so men and women chained to the two long walls, with piles of straw for beds.
At the far end, Hulegu Khan limped alone through the filthy room and barged his way out of the door.
He was still heading for the royal stables. Hulegu meant to take his swiftest horses and to ride off into the night, to find his armies out in the country where he would be safe from me.
Following at a full sprint, I kicked open the door and rushed back outside. I found myself at the edge of a large, paved courtyard.
Where I stopped.
Ahead, the palace stables were ablaze. Great red-orange flames jetted up and lit up the night, throwing manic shadows and lights all around. Horses bolted away from the roaring fire toward the front of the palace complex, directed by brave stable hands but many other servants fled in panic.
God love you, Stephen. You did it.
Silhouetted against the flames, stood Hulegu.
He had his back to me and I stalked toward him.
Rapid footsteps sounded behind me. I could tell at once that it was not Eva’s familiar gait, so I jumped to the side and whipped around with my blade up and ready.
Khutulun ran past me and struck Hulegu in the base of the spine with her sword, thrusting him forward off his feet. He landed on his face and she was on him, flipping him over onto his back and pulling her sword back while spitting a furious stream of insults in the Mongol tongue, while he snarled up at her like an animal and writhed in pain from his wound.
I seized Khutulun by the shoulder and dragged her away before she killed him. She turned on me, mad vengeance in her eyes, and shook her sword in my face while she raged.
But I was too gripped by my passion for the death of that man, and I would not be denied. My own anger was very great, and though she had lost far more to him that I had, I was the lord and would make her submit to my will. I struck her in the face, kicked her legs out and stole her sword. She screamed and tried to attack me but Eva jumped in and restrained her while I turned on Hulegu.
His wild, barbarian features, twisted in rage, were cast in mad shadows by the slanting, dancing red light of the flames. His arms flailed and grasped at the ground but his legs were motionless due to the wound to his spine. A pool of blood spread through his silk coat low on his body, and a shining shadow of blood leaking from his body grew and spread beneath him.
“My brother made you,” I said. “And now I will unmake you.”
He growled in his own language and spat a mouthful of blood onto his chest. Hulegu’s contempt turned to bitter laughter. I sensed that he was mocking my judgemental tone. And he was right. I had just murdered hundreds myself, including innocent slaves.
But I already knew I was not a righteous man. Just as I knew that he was an evil one. All of a sudden, I was filled with a powerful loathing, for him, for his entire people. For William.
I slashed my dagger across his throat and dragged him upright while his fists hammered ineffectually against my head. My rage consumed me and I sank my mouth into the gushing wound and sucked down the hot blood, which spilled over my face and soaked my chest. His blows grew weaker and I stopped to look him in the eye. Hulegu’s mouth opened and closed and his eyes glared at me even as the light began to go out from them. I tossed him to the ground, snatched up my dagger again and planted one foot on his chest while I sawed through his neck with my blade. I was shouting at him, but I do not know what I said. When I ripped his head from his body, I held it aloft and sucked the last remnants of blood from the tattered neck. Finally, I tossed it to the ground and spat on his corpse.
I let out a huge sigh and looked up at the smoke billowing into the night sky.
It was done.
When I turned, Eva and Khutulun were holding on to each other and their eyes glinted red with the light from the inferno of the palace stables. Behind them, the palace itself was being swiftly consumed by the vast conflagration and the roofs were already collapsing, throwing sparks and flame into the black night.
“Richard?” Eva said. “We must flee.”
I nodded. “You go.” I pushed past her, snatching up my stolen sword and heading back to the outbuilding near us. “I will see you at the meeting place.”
She stared at me, aghast, as I strode back into the hall of the blood slaves. Those inside cowered away from me on their filthy piles of straw. Of course, I was drenched in blood and no doubt looked like a horror. While they wailed, terrified of me and the fires all around their prison, I moved to pull their chains from the iron rings affixed to the timber walls. A young man shivered in terror as I used my blade to prise the ring out. The Mongol sword bent and I tossed it aside and gripped the ring and pulled.
“What in the name of God are you doing?” Eva said from the doorway.
“Go,” I said, through gritted teeth. “Please, go.”
She came closer, incredulous. “Leave them, for the love of God, Richard. We must flee in the great rush of the people or we shall be isolated and captured. You know this. Leave these slaves.”
“I will not,” I said, growling as the ring wriggled loose and came free. The idiot blood slave stayed where he was, eyes wide and shivering. I tossed the ring into his lap so that he could carry the chain with him. “Go, you damned fool.” I said it in Arabic and when he still did not move, I grabbed him and threw him to the door and moved to the next slave. She was a hideously ugly young woman but her eyes said she understood her freedom was at hand. I grabbed the ring by her with both hands, plant
ed my feet and heaved backwards.
“You are a bloody fool, Richard!” Eva shouted as she pulled out her dagger and stomped to the next slave.
Instead of killing him, she used her dagger to hack at the iron fixture next to his head.
Khutulun had no compassion in her, no Christian conscience or moral consideration for the weak. And yet she also came back to help. Working together, we freed the blood slaves from their chains very swiftly and followed the last of them out.
The palace complex was in chaos, and we joined the flow of fleeing people without being challenged. Our agents in the city had started small fires in various quarters when they saw the flames in the palace. They had the effect that Hassan had sworn they would. The danger of fire panicked the residents and soldiers in the city. When we made it beyond the palace gate we fell into the crush of people pushing and shoving their way out. We were covered in blood and burns and blackened by smoke and I assumed we would have to fight our way clear at some point. Yet, the people were Armenian Christians and Persians and Mongols and people from all over the region and the lands that Hulegu had dominated and thus everyone was a stranger to everyone else. So, although some people around us gave us suspicious looks, we escaped unchallenged into the suburbs and then into the rural farmland just as the sun began to lighten the sky.
Hulegu and his men were dead and Eva and Khutulun had made it out with me.
Whether Thomas, Stephen and Hassan had survived, we had no idea.
***
Our meeting point was an isolated fisherman’s house many miles to the west on the shores of Lake Urmia that we had taken over days before. We chased down an escaped horse and, later, another one, and the three of us made it to the house before midday.
Stephen was already there. The shrewd young man had used his fire pots to thoroughly burn the stables and had ridden one of Hulegu’s magnificent Saracen mares all the way to the shore before dawn. He was wide-eyed and shaken by it all and filled with the disbelieving giddiness that men experience after surviving battle.
Inside the house was a large table stained with fish blood, a few stools and benches and the supplies we had stashed there. Chief amongst them was the wine, which I drank with great enthusiasm.
Khutulun spent the day alone, on the shores of the lake, deeply affected by the death of her brother. I wondered whether she regretted trading Hulegu’s life for his. Those in mourning contemplate past moments shared with the fallen but they also lament facing the future without them. If she was considering the future, perhaps she already regretted her immortality and the bareness that came with it.
“She should come inside,” Eva muttered. “She will draw attention to us.”
“Leave her be,” I said.
None of us truly expected to see Thomas or Hassan but late in the day the old Templar appeared on the horizon. I rode out and brought him in. He trudged all the way across the plain wounded and thirsty and cold and he collapsed once inside the door. After I gave him my own blood, he recovered rather quickly.
“Hassan sacrificed himself so that I might escape the palace,” Thomas explained while he drank some wine. “We defended the hall door against more men than I could count. They all wanted to free their khan. We abandoned the position when the door turned to flame and yet we were pursued by a great number as we fled. Hassan pushed me through and closed a door, defending it from the other side so that I might make my escape without him.” Thomas shook his head. “A Saracen. Sacrificed himself for me. A Templar.”
Stephen nodded as if he understood. “The Assassins are obsessed with death. All they want is to enter Heaven.”
“No,” I said. “His home was destroyed. His family. Everyone he knew was dead. All he had left to do with his life was to end it.”
“And what is left for us?” Thomas asked. “Half of our task is done. It has taken so long. And now we must find William.”
“No,” I said.
They looked at me.
“William has gone to the East. He swore that he will be gone for decades, at least. Centuries, perhaps. If he returns at all.”
“So that is it?” Thomas said, growing angry. “He saved your life with his blood in that Baghdad gatehouse and you just forgive his crimes?”
“I forgive nothing,” I said, keeping calm. “William will certainly die. And yet, he will wreak his evil on a distant people. His mischief will be directed amongst the Mongols and their enemies in the East. When he returns, I will kill him.”
None of them wanted to face that journey eastwards again.
“So,” Stephen began. “What do we do until then?”
I looked at them. Stephen, Thomas, Eva and pursed my lips, considering whether I should speak what had long been on my mind.
“Do you mean to slay us, now?” Thomas asked. He spoke softly, with no challenge in his voice. It sounded as though he would have almost welcomed it. “To be rid of all those given the Gift of the blood?”
The truth was, I had considered it. I had ruminated upon it, on and off, for years. By my hand as well as William’s, there had been a great proliferation of immortals walking the Earth, and I felt that it was my duty to put an end to all of them, including the ones from my own blood. Other than Eva, of course.
Spreading my open hands, I spoke softly. “It never crossed my mind,” I said. “However, we know from Bertrand and from William himself that my brother left dozens of immortals in Christendom. Knights and lords and God only knows who else. They must be stopped. No one will stop them if I do not.”
“If you do not?” Eva asked. “You alone?”
I held her gaze for a moment. “Stephen, my good fellow, would you be so kind as to ask Khutulun to come inside now. There is something I would like to propose to you all.”
All but Khutulun sat on the benches on the other side of the table from me. They were all exhausted and should have been resting. But I needed to speak and I think they needed to hear it.
“You were each thrust into this existence, in one way or another, through the actions of my brother.” That was true for Eva and also for Thomas. I looked at Stephen and Khutulun, who had joined me voluntarily and then begged me to grant them the Gift, each for their own reasons. “Some more than others, perhaps. And yet we have remained bound together for years. You have followed me for thousands of miles, through horrors and hardships. You men renounced sworn oaths because you knew you had a higher calling. A greater moral duty, to destroy a particular form of evil that no one else could. You swore to defeat that evil. And now you have.” I cleared my throat, hesitant to continue in case they refused what I was about to offer. “But perhaps it is time to exchange new oaths. Perhaps, I would swear to you that I would protect you from all who would do you harm and provide for you wealth and the blood you need to survive. And perhaps you would swear to serve me and do as I command, where it serves the cause of our Order.”
“Our Order?” Thomas said, frowning.
“An Order, yes. An Order dedicated to a single purpose. We would make oaths to dedicate our lives to destroying all immortals that William de Ferrers has made. First in Christendom, and then wherever else we may find them. And we swear to kill William himself when he returns from the East.”
Stephen was nodding enthusiastically. The others did not immediately protest, at least.
“And if he does not return?” Thomas said. “What then?”
“Then we will swear to pursue him to the ends of the Earth and cut off his head wherever we find him.”
I wanted to say more. I knew I had said it all rather badly, and I wished to explain how it would give us a common purpose, and it would mean that we continued to rely on each other but I fell silent.
“I will swear it,” Stephen said, eagerly. “I will swear the oath. We can do great things together, I know we can. Yes, I will swear it.”
Thomas pursed his lips. “It would be an honourable duty.” He inclined his head.
“You want me to live in your land?
” Khutulun asked. Even filthy and unkempt, and in a dark hovel, her beauty shone like the moon and the stars. “I will not do this. I will return to my people.”
Eva’s head snapped sharply to me and I knew what she was thinking. That I could not let her go. She was a blood drinker. She would never age, so far as we knew, and she was a killer besides. Clever, dangerous. To let her go would immediately undermine everything I wanted to establish. It was easy to read Eva’s thoughts in that fleeting glance.
Khutulun should be the first immortal executed by our new Order.
“Very well,” I said, instead. “Go home. Be with your people.” I leaned forward and pointed a finger at her. “But if you make any trouble. If you become another Hulegu, I will kill you, too.”
Khutulun laughed in my face, her expression utterly contemptuous. “I will wait until the Ilkhan’s funeral. Only then will I go.” She held my gaze, daring me to challenge her even though she surely knew I would best her.
How she had gotten wind of my plans, I could not comprehend, for I had been careful not to tell her. Then I looked at Stephen, who was studiously inspecting a point on the ceiling.
“Stephen, you great blabbering fool,” I muttered. “Are your virtues so easily overturned by the handsomeness of a woman’s face?”
Eva barked out a bitter laugh. “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own?”
I smiled. “A fair question.”
“Khutulun,” I said to her, “it is important that you understand. If you make any other immortals with your own blood, or if you use your strength against Christian kingdoms, or if you speak of me or our Order to anyone, I shall not hesitate to slaughter you. Do you believe you could stand against me?”
She tossed her braids and scoffed but she lowered her head in submission. “I understand. I have no further interest in you or your Order.”