by Dan Davis
In return for this dishonourable act of deceit, she offered him her brilliance as a warrior, a tactician, and political strategist.
With her help, by 1280 Kaidu was the most powerful ruler of Central Asia, reigning from western Mongolia to Oxus, and from the Central Siberian Plateau to India.
In time, stories of her ability made their way to Christendom.
There was a lowly Venetian merchant and conman named Marco Polo who claimed to have visited the court of Kublai Khan. I know for a fact that he never travelled further than the shores of the Black Sea, and his accounts of the East were stolen from hundreds of braver men, who themselves had only heard the tales second or third hand, while he plied them with cheap wine in the Venetian trading colonies. This Marco Polo was a man who wished to be a great traveller but he also lacked the courage to venture from safety. As a collector of stories, he made a great impression, however, it was not he but another man who wrote down those collected stories which were presented as the experiences of the fraudster Polo himself.
Whatever his personal lies and deceit, he at least got some things correct. He described Khutulun as a superb warrior, one who could ride into enemy ranks and snatch a captive as easily as a hawk snatches a chicken. She fought with Kaidu in many battles, particularly those against Kublai and William. The story goes that Khutulun insisted that any man who wished to marry her must defeat her in wrestling but if he failed she would win his horses. That certainly sounds like her as she knew that no man on Earth could ever defeat her. Well, I supposed I could have done but whether she would have married me is another matter. But through this cunning challenge, she spent years winning horses from those competitions and the wagers of hopeful suitors and it is said that she gathered a herd numbering ten thousand.
There are a half-dozen stories of who was her eventual husband. Some chronicles say her husband was a handsome man who failed to assassinate her father and was taken prisoner. Others refer to him as Kaidu's companion from another clan. A Persian chronicler wrote that Khutulun fell in love with Ghazan, a Mongol ruler in Persia.
So many contradictory tales surely mean one thing. She had no husband. No doubt many eminent men professed their certainty that they would be the one to claim her, and thus these stories spread. But she had no interest in such things and wanted only to fight and kill and be a great warrior.
Kaidu had fourteen sons but Khutulun was the one from whom he most sought advice and political support. Indeed, he named her as his successor to the khanate before he died in 1301. When Kaidu died, Khutulun guarded his tomb. But his sons hated her brilliance, hated her ageless beauty and strength and they feared whatever dark magic prolonged her youth. Above all, perhaps, they knew she was not of their blood, so the sons of Kaidu banded together all their men and they killed her, though she is said to have killed a hundred of them before she fell.
If she had stayed with me, fought with us in our order, she would likely have lived longer. But she would not have lived the life of a Mongol warrior and that was all she wanted. Her death at the ungrateful hands of men she had made great caused me to feel a terrible surge of hatred and a thirst for revenge on them. But by the time I heard, it had already long come to pass. Besides, I am sure her death was also glorious and I smiled to imagine the ferocity and virtuosity with which she would have fought to her last.
What of her enemies, Kublai Khan and William de Ferrers? The Great Khan slowly and relentlessly conquered all China and established the Yuan dynasty and became Emperor of China as well as the Great Khan of the Mongols. That conquest was perhaps the most remarkable of all the achievements of the Mongols, for the Chinese were the most advanced, the most numerous and the most well-defended people the world had ever known. Indeed, their cities were so well defended, by walls so high, wide and strongly-built that William advised Kublai to send word to the Ilkhanate for the great trebuchets used by Hulegu to smash the walls of Baghdad. With those weapons, the Great Khan was finally able to break through city and after city and complete the conquest.
Kublai was astonishingly successful, and yet he also experienced great failure. His attempted conquests of lands that would become Vietnam and Japan ended in disaster. His favourite wife died and that broke his heart and his spirit. A few years later, his son and heir also died and this calamity broke what remained. The most powerful man on Earth indulged his gluttony and grew disgustingly fat and riddled with gout and God only knows what else. He died in 1294, aged 78.
William, it seems, had learned his lesson. He had not made Kublai into an immortal and had instead served in a quieter role, advising and steering. Manipulating and assassinating.
After Kublai came his grandson. And after him, a series of young successors who each ruled for only a short time. Some were more capable than others but all were severely lacking in the glory and ability of their forefathers, becoming no more than administrators of their enormous empire. Like all Chinese dynasties, the Mongol Yuan dynasty turned inward and became obsessed with the machinations of the court. While they called themselves Khan as well as Emperor, they soon became nothing like steppe nomads and lost that which made them unique. Still, the Chinese always knew they were ruled by northern barbarians, no matter how sinicised they became, and after only a hundred years they were overthrown.
So many Yuan Emperors died young and died early into their reigns. What was William hoping to accomplish by his machinations? Always, he tried to remake the world, and remake the people of the world, into what he wanted them to be. William wanted naked power. He wanted to be worshipped. But he dressed it up in grand notions of religiosity or civic glories for ordinary men. I do believe that somewhere in his black heart he wanted to build great things, to change the world for the sake of some confused, empty notions of change and progress. That is why he always told men precisely what they wanted to hear. And yet because of his evil nature, all he ever truly did was destroy. Just as his efforts to shape the Yuan dynasty ended in their overthrow and destruction.
William would return to the West and begin to wreak his evil on the people of Christendom once more but it would not be for some time.
But in his prolonged absence, we still had many immortals scattered throughout the kingdoms of Europe to find and to kill.
***
William’s immortals had to die. We had two names only from William but I knew well what I would do. The plan was a good one. I had been repeating it for months, even years.
Take either man alive, or even both of them, and torture them for the names of all the others that they knew. Then I would behead them and chase down the next one. Thusly, I would clean the corrupt filth from all of Christendom.
I knew of Simon de Montfort. He was a French lord and also Earl of Leicester in England. He was one of the men who joined Innocent’s Crusade and took part in the shameful sacking and conquering Constantinople decades before.
The other was an English knight named Sir Hugh le Despenser. I half-remembered some fellow named Despenser but it had been a long time since I had been in England.
When Thomas and I rode into France and asked after de Montfort, we eventually discovered that the man I knew of had died fighting the Cathar heretics, almost fifty years earlier.
“Then our work is done for us,” Thomas said. “Fifty years ago, or nearly.”
“Perhaps,” I said, partially relieved and also enormously disappointed. “Yet, these immortals can be tricky. William would have chosen the most cunning of men.”
The old de Montfort’s son, also the Earl of Leicester, had lately been stirring up trouble against King Henry III. No matter how often I had heard it, I was still astonished that the little boy I had known before my self-imposed exile was still the King of England, now an old man. This new Simon de Montfort had risen in rebellion.
“He is the true ruler of England,” said a giggling, fat, Burgundian townsman in Dijon. “Henry is nothing.”
The story was confirmed a number of times before it dawned on me.
“The son is the father,” I said to a bewildered Thomas. “Do you not see? They have done the very same thing that we have proposed to do in order to pass our wealth down from generation to generation. The very same thing, or something similar. This new Simon de Montfort is the same man as the father. William must have granted him the gift, he lived for some time and then decided to pretend to die.” With sudden inspiration, I could imagine how it could be done. “You or I could do the same thing, Thomas. On the battlefield, you are run through and fall dead. A trusted man takes your body away, perhaps gives you blood to drink. And much later you return, claiming to be your own son, now grown. I am sure it could be done.”
“This is all a fancy,” Thomas said, for he always lacked imagination. “You believe this only because Stephen suggested it for us.”
“William said that they were men after his own heart,” I replied. “And this Earl of Leicester has seized England for himself. Does that not sound like something William would do? Our duty is to slay this de Montfort, and to thus save the King and his kingdom.”
Thomas remained sceptical until we discovered that de Montfort’s right-hand man in the rebellion was none other than Hugh le Despenser.
Our joy at discovering both our quarries were already flushed into the open was short lived. When we neared Paris, we found out that the rebellion had been crushed in battle, and both de Montfort and le Despenser were slain.
“Perhaps they are feigning death once more,” I suggested. “We should observe the men who claim to be their sons. Perhaps they have simply pulled the same trick once more.”
As I would eventually discover, I was wrong about that and the vampires de Montfort and Despenser were truly dead. Our best chance for smashing William’s immortals was snuffed out.
But we continued on to England in order to investigate.
Whenever I had imagined coming home, I had pictured myself walking through damp woodlands and colourful meadows, with the hills of Derbyshire as my horizons.
In fact, our ship crossed the channel and hugged around the coast of Kent and then up the Thames into London. It was a truly vile place, and only ever became worse as the centuries rolled by. It was a city for the grasping, the ambitious, and the perverse. Seekers of power and pleasure. Desperate men and women living in filth, breathing in the smoke and stench of rotting shit while dreaming of one day winning great wealth and marrying their son to an impoverished lady. A city of pimps, jesters, smooth-skinned lads, flatterers, pretty boys, effeminates, paederasts, singing girls, quacks, sorceresses, extortioners, night wanderers, magicians, mimes, beggars, and buffoons.
Stephen was right at home.
Stepping off the boat was just like it was in every other port between Calais and Acre. A swarm of skinny boys shouting questions and saying welcome back, sir, or welcome home, as if they recognised you.
And yet…
It was different. The stench was more powerful than anywhere but Paris, nevertheless there was a familiarity to everything that confused me at first. The sounds of so many English voices raised in cries as men laboured on the dockside or shouted their wares from the public cookshops just up the way along the waterfront. I found myself drawn to the smell of hot pastry and the savoury aroma of boiled beef.
“What can I get you, squire?” the cheery man in front of his shop said as I drew to a stop in front of him. He was plump and ruddy cheeked, as was appropriate for an English vendor. “Fresh game and fowl, the best in London, as I’m sure you know, squire.”
I could smell suet, onions, eggs, and butter, and I wiped the drool from the corners of my mouth. The roasted birds looked wonderful but I pointed to a dark, glazed pie big enough to feed a dozen. “What is in that?”
“Beef and kidney, squire. The finest cuts, by God’s hooks, they are. Onion stewed for half a day until it—”
“I shall take it.”
I fished coins from my purse while the fellow scratched his head. “You’ll be sending your servant to pick it up, will you, squire?”
“Hand it over.”
He was uncomfortable and unsure but he took my coin readily enough and handed the thing over like he was passing me a child and I tucked it into my arm. The smell was glorious and I could not resist a moment longer. Punching through the thick, inedible crust, I pulled out the rich, savoury filling within and shoved a fistful into my mouth.
“Steady on, squire,” the shopkeeper said.
The taste of it was remarkable. Salty, tender meat, slippery with the rich juices.
Fifty years. I have not been home in fifty years. Half my life.
In my mind’s eye, I saw the hall of Ashbury Manor filled with smiling faces. I recalled sneaking into the kitchens of Duffield Castle to snatch some of the stewed beef before it was spooned onto the platters and being caught by the cook. He cracked me on the skull with an enormous wooden spoon. Standing there on the busy waterfront I laughed out loud, like a madman. I was filled with emotion. So much so that I almost wept.
Fifty years.
“Here, Thomas,” I said. “You must share this with me. This is the taste of England.”
He wrinkled his nose. “Then perhaps we should have stayed in France.”
England had been in turmoil for decades but the rebellious barons had finally been crushed and the remaining rebels cornered and destroyed by King Henry’s son, Prince Edward. The prince was already in his late twenties and a man in the prime of his life. A man who had been campaigning against the rebels for years, and who had fought in half a dozen pitched battles. Once the rebellion was over, and the country was finally at peace, Edward left on his crusade which would end in his attempted assassination at the hands of the subjugated Ismaili fedayin.
King Henry grew ill and died when his son was on the way back to England. When I had left, fifty years before, Henry had been a young boy under the regency of William Marshal. While I had remained ageless in my absence, he had ruled for decades and died a decrepit old man. I was pleased that he had lived and ruled for so long but I felt very guilty for abandoning him when he had clearly needed me. If I had stayed in England, or returned sooner, I would have been on hand to kill the vampires de Montfort and Despenser and end their rebellions.
That guilt was one reason why I perhaps lost a little fervour for the aims of the Order of the White Dagger. When Edward became king, I found myself fighting for him against the Welsh and later against the Scots. It was simple to find the employment of a lord to keep me funded and occupied, and at other times I was paid as a mercenary directly by the Crown. Always, I said to my peers and lords that I had grown up in the Holy Land, the grandson of an English knight named Richard of Ashbury.
No man had heard of him.
Once Acre fell, in 1291, I knew I would have to come up with a new story to tell. But as long as you fought well and did not seek to climb above a low station, few men cared where you came from. Everyone always assumed the worst. Why else would a wandering Englishman be cagey about his origins if he was not some form of criminal? But a man-at-arms’ trade is the murder of the king’s enemies, and so sinners were always welcome.
In all the fighting, I pushed my knowledge and experience onto the men I fought with. I had learned from the Mongols that mobility was vitally important in war. Likewise, I championed the use of the small horses called hobelars as the best means for moving men rapidly in a campaign. At first, they told me I was mad but over the years I saw the changes happening until men treated it as so obvious a thing it was not worth so much as commenting on. Likewise, thanks to my experience with the Wealden archers against the French and witnessing and hearing accounts of the Mongol arrow storms, I pushed always for bringing more and more archers with us. Again, at the start of Edward’s reign, I was mocked for wasting resources on such men but, in just a few decades’ time, we could not recruit enough of them.
In between campaigns, we searched for the immortals of Christendom that William had created.
Steph
en wormed his way into London and began to quietly establish himself as a man of standing, though he had to be warned repeatedly to stop bringing so much attention to himself. My dear Eva set herself up first in Exeter, possibly because it was so far away from London, and then in Bristol. When we crossed paths, we both pretended that we were happy. Both of them inconspicuously cultivated contacts with the itinerant folks who returned regularly to the cities. Through the words passed between them, Thomas and I tracked down reports of bloody crimes and suspicious outlaws. For some years, Stephen and Eva would swap houses and trade lives, each pretending to be the relative or descendent of the other. For a few years between wars, I myself ruled the townhouse in London that we had taken for our order. It only confirmed what I had already known; that I was not well suited to city life.
Finding the spawn of William was hard work. Most leads led nowhere and it would be some years before we found a true vampire once again. It would be in the reign of Edward’s grandson, Edward III, and during his wars against the Kingdom of France. After the elder Edward died, the crown passed to Edward II who was rather a disappointment, to say the least. He very nearly undid all of his father’s gains.
But, just as the soft Henry had produced the iron-hard Edward, so his weakling son produced a lion in his turn.
Ever since he was a young man, and before any of his famous deeds were done, I had great affection for Edward III. Despite the protestations from Thomas, Stephen, and Eva that I was abandoning my oaths to the Order of the White Dagger, I had thrown my lot in with him early on and I was at his side when we seized the would-be usurper, Roger Mortimer.
And I would fight for him when we campaigned against the French, defeating them time and again thanks to our mobility, our unity of action, and the power of our archers.